


The Broken and the Unbreakable

by AliceEstherYesmin



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7672726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceEstherYesmin/pseuds/AliceEstherYesmin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm going to try writing some Kastle one-shots. This is the ship I didn't know I needed. Please send me prompts if you like what you see. I'll try to write any prompts sent my way.</p>
<p>Thanks! <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fireworks

He hears an explosion and his nightmares become real. He’s back in Kandahar and the sun is unbearable, the heat is unbearable, the noise is unbearable. He’s trapped in a building, he’s trapped in a Humvee, he’s trapped. Where he's trapped doesn't matter. What matters is the sound of death in the sky. Another one, closer, the scream of a shell and then the thunderous roar of its explosion.

He opens his eyes and the room is dark, but he can still smell the smoke. His gun is gone. He’s vulnerable. A flash of light fills the window and then another rumble. He sees a silhouette beside him and he knows it’s a hostile. He doesn’t know how he knows. He sees the shadow of the person rise up and fill the window. The explosions don’t stop, they’re constant, buzzing in his mind and turning his vision red. And he can’t even think about anything else, how he’s in a bed and there’s a fan spinning overhead and the air is cool. All he can see is Kandahar, like he never really left.

“Frank,” she says. He doesn’t even hear himself screaming.

She wakes when he starts out of bed, sitting upright, screaming, gasping for breath between screams. She sees his bare chest by the pale light outside, heaving up and down, slick with sweat. His eyes dart about the room, never focusing on one point for more than a second. She rises with him, rubbing sleep from her eyes. He turns when he hears her, but does he really hear her? She watches as he focuses on her, and then lunges.

He needs to kill her, because he doesn’t know who she is and how she got here and what side she is on. This is war. He isn’t going to wait for her to slit his throat. She is close enough to kill. She is close. He grabs her arms and pins her to the bed. He doesn’t even feel the softness of the mattress. He doesn’t recognize the face illuminated by the explosions outside.

She grasps his arms, but her grip isn’t nearly as tight as his.

“Frank, it’s me. It’s Karen. It’s okay. You had a bad dream, that’s all.” She tries (fails) to keep the fear out of her voice. She was getting better at it, day by day. It comes with the territory when you live in and through hell. He is strong, but she is unbreakable. She sees him flinch with each explosion, and her eyes widen with understanding even as he raises a fist to swing. She catches it, and she may not be as strong, but she is his strength. “It’s fireworks, Frank. Fourth of July. This isn’t Kandahar.”

Every place is Kandahar now, but he blinks rapidly and looks down at her and finally sees her, really sees. He looks at his curled fist held tremulously in her outstretched grasp, knows what he was about to do. His face crumples and he rolls off of her.

She follows him, rising up and circling his wide shoulders in her arms. She whispers in his ear, “Just fireworks, Frank. That’s all. That’s it.” Her words soothe, even though he still flinches with each crack outside, each pop.

His vision clears and the room is not in Kandahar, the fireworks outside are not explosions, and she is not an enemy. No, she brought him back with her words, coaxed him out of nightmare.

He realizes he could have killed her. He doesn’t cry, but he is broken. His country celebrates the freedom its soldiers bought by sending their worst nightmares into the sky.

“God fucking bless the USA,” he says softly.

Her laughter is medicine. He knows he’s dangerous, and that he should tell her to leave. But he can’t bring himself to say the words. And he knows how she’d respond anyway. She wouldn’t listen. She would stay right here because she is unbreakable.

She loves him. She loves him for, with, despite his brokenness.

And if a monster lurks inside him, then she loves the monster too.


	2. Ashes to Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-season 2. Karen goes to the ashes of Frank's old house. One-shot.

She is lost.

She knows the city, and she knows the address. She knows how to navigate the streets to this place. She knows where she is and yet she is adrift on a soft, quiet sea of ash. It is early morning, and light has begun to filter through an overcast, purple-gray sky. Her surroundings are washed out, as gray as the rubble she stands in. Her lungs fill with dust and ash and smoke and gasoline.

The yellow tape, though torn and broken in places, surrounds what used to be a house. A breeze picks up and the tape snaps against a tree spared from the flames. She looks up at the murderous sky and imagines the funeral pyre, the flames leaping up into the night, sparks burning brighter than any stars. She has walked into the aftermath, and the remains cling to the bottom of her black suit pants. They swirl in the air and settle on her freckled skin, her white blouse, her blonde hair. Her eyes are red. It’s the smoke. It isn’t tears. She tells herself she has no reason to be crying.

Yet her hand goes to still trembling lips, and her eyes are wet. She holds memories of his bruised face across from her at a diner, looking down from a bench in a court room, covered in shadows, back-lit by the light from a shed in the woods. She wonders if she’ll ever see him again, and hates herself for hoping that she will. She fumbles with shaking hands to open the bag slung over her shoulder, rifling through the folders and notebooks to find the photograph of his family. She holds it up and for a brief moment the clouds part and patches of brilliant dawn shine down. She looks at the picture, then looks around. The last trace of this home is gone. It went up in smoke.

She knows he did this. She even knows why. She hates that there’s a finality to it. She hates that she doesn’t know what comes next.

She can bear it no longer. The photograph seems to weigh a million pounds, so she relinquishes it to the earth. It floats, it flutters, it falls to the ground.

“You see? I stole it, but I’ve brought it back,” she says softly.

She hears footsteps behind her, and turns quickly, kicking up a cloud of ash. She has explanations ready on her tongue. She is a reporter, a real one now, with a real office and a real desk. She has her credentials in her bag, and she’s reaching before them before she registers the bruised face peeking out from underneath a dark blue hoodie. When she does, her eyes widen and for a moment she’s frozen. Then she’s all nervous energy, slinging her bag over one shoulder and running a hand through her hair.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says, with a quick glance around to see if anyone is watching.

“Neither should you,” he replies, a smirk on his face. His lips are cracked.

She gives him a disapproving look, but then words fail her. She searches his face and hates that she’s happy to see him, hates that she worries whether those bruises and cuts still sting. She wonders if she really hates it, or if she’s just hoping she does, because that’s what any sane person would do. She wonders if being sane is overrated.

He meets her gaze with almost a challenge in his face, as if he wants her censure and disapproval, as if he hopes she gets angry. But, in truth, he doesn’t know what the hell he wants. He has some ideas, but he doesn’t know what comes next. He has no hope that what comes next will be any better than the shit he’s been through. With his luck, it’ll get a hell of a lot worse.

He is lost.

He knows the city, and he knows the address. He knows how to navigate the streets to this place. He knows where he is and yet he is adrift on a soft, quiet sea of ash. On a sea of his memories that he had to burn away.

She looks at the ground and crouches down to pick up the photograph. It’s light as a feather now as she stands back up. She gives it one last glance before holding it out to him.

He looks from the photograph to her. He wants no anchor to what came before. Vengeance was a bitch, but what came after was worse. The emptiness, the void, the scream with no sound. He takes the photograph from her all the same, and she flashes a timid smile.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says, her voice choked with tears.

He’s far from okay. He’ll never be okay again. He chuckles and shakes his head once. “That’d make a shitty Hallmark card.”

She smiles and laughs, and he thinks that, just maybe, every time he makes her laugh, he’ll be a little less lost.

She thinks that, just maybe, his presence, his nearness, his face makes her a little less lost.

He reaches into his pocket and brings out a lighter. He flicks the flame to life and brings it to one corner of the photograph. He knows the faces, but can’t bring himself to recall their names. It’s too painful. He sees the pain in her eyes, and knows he’s too far gone for it to be reflected in his own.

The fire turns the burning edge brown before it consumes it whole. The ash blows away on the wind. He lets it drop to the ground, where it burns to nothing.

She watches it burn, but her eyes are drawn to him instead. His old life is dead, but he is alive, and she understands why there are ashes around him, why everything had to be sacrificed to the fire.

She understands, and he sees her understanding, and together they are a little less lost.

He says, “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”

She shakes her head no.

“There’s a place I know not a couple blocks from here. Makes the best pancakes I’ve ever tasted,” he says.

She nods.

They leave the ashes behind.


End file.
